MincMincMinc wrote: »

Vengeance is fine for a learning environment. Actually it is probably ideal for a learning environment in today's game. Early on ESO was far more vertical progression wise. Vertical progression had tiers to separate playerbases which is why we had u50 and then nocp and then you finally got to vetcp campaigns. However now that ESO is such a wide horizontal progression game there is no way to split up the playerbase. New players are cp160 within the first day if they want.

The only way to create those learning environments with horizontal progression is to cut back on systems. However at a certain point people wonder what systems are enabled? what about this or that? Which can be worse in some cases because it clouds the experience making the new player learn tons of more stuff just to play something that should be easier. This was the issue with the NOPROC nocp campaign. Even 10year vet players like me had to spend hours and hours testing random sets to see what worked. How can you expect new players to participate, who dont keep up with pts and patch notes or even read wiki pages and build editors.

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IMO replacing the u50 and nocp campaign is a nobrainer, they are beyond dead. Then have two cp 30 day campaigns. Testing wise for proper data you NEED the ballgroup and vet CP guild group players though. THEY are the lag. How they play, the choices they make, the skills they prefer, the effects they choose. There will be very clear performance demand differences from ball group players vs lvl10 new players spamming light attack only.

The other major design hole we are seeing is right now vengeance now has its own system for stat changes. This was probably put in place to quickly allow players during testing to have build choice to some degree, while allowing zos to introduce and plug and play systems on demand. IMO they should have made the simple perk and loadout system MIMIC item sets and bonuses, mundus, enchants. As a training tool give new players a basic menu so they could learn about pairing item sets and quickly swap choices they would normally do ingame. Then start baking in each of the mundus, enchant, gear, item set bonus systems as they get vengeance reworks. Slowly greying them out in the vengeance test menu.

Except vengeance is in no way preparation for actual live PvP. It's templated no skill zergfest. That's NOT how to prepare someone to create and play builds.

I hate this. No one wants to play this. We worked our hardest to build our toons to be so personalized and how we want them that this is more like an Apex game where you pick premade characters. If this is what we can expect from ESO, I’m out.

Were you able to successfully get into large-scale battles?
> Not really. Seemed to be fewer players. The few keep battles were one sided with a larger attacking group, and no way to defend against them.

Did large-scale battles feel better latency-wise and how combat feels (responsive or not, fun or not, etc.)?
> Not really. Definitely not fun.

What you think of the simplified abilities?
Not much. Most likely people will find the unbalanced class lines, and we'll start seeing them more (like it seems so many are running a necro colossus ult these days).

What are your initial thoughts on Vengeance Test?
> It's not fun. I left to do other things. Most of my PVP guild were doing dungeons last night instead of vengeance.

Do you have any general feedback?
> Need to maintain the gameplay variety that is available in Cyro, and makes it fun to play. Vengeance is not that.

vengeance has been so empty you cant test performance issues.

that tells you the changes are extremely unpopular. the population went from full to EMPTY.

TESTING IS IRRELEVANT SINCE THE VENGEANCE CAMPAIGN IS DEAD. YOU CANT TEST PERFORMANCE ON A DEAD SERVER.

Bad business decision! the numbers speak for themselves!!!

JustLovely wrote: »

ShutUpitsRed wrote: »

Vengeance campaign, meant for testing high volumes of players in Cyrodiil, returns September 22nd-29th. Great!
The Undaunted Celebration, the most grindy, and one of the most popular, PvE events returns September 18th-30th.

So PvP, already struggling, is supposed to be getting one of its rare performance tests during the biggest, or at least one of the biggest, PvE events of the year. Can't wait for lower population numbers to be blamed on overall lack of interest, just like lower WM pop earlier this year (when WM is up there with Witches Festival for worthless rewards).

I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist but surely they can't be this clueless?

If all of ESO share a limited server capacity, then it makes sense to have both events going same time.

I remember when they told us that PvP and PvE were on seperate servers. Then over years and years we all saw how PvP performance declined with the addition of every new PvE expansion. So ya. Whatever.

I am with you there. Thats what I tell all those PvE people usually if they want to explain to me how Vengeance is the better PvP.

ibeprofun wrote: »

No one plays it!

How did you not learn your lesson the first time the server was up?

How is this a good business decision?

To further compound the annoyance, you disable all other cyrodiil instances!!!

Who is making decisions down there?!

who is empowering the person who makes decisions down there?! (who hired the decision maker)

greyhost, you have a server that consistently nears the population limit during regular service hours. then, you implement the vengeance campaign and the servers go empty. the population went from NEAR FULL TO NEAR EMPTY. WHY DID YOU BRING THAT DEAD THING BACK TO LIFE?

Im beyond amazed. not just that you made the vengeance campaign, but that you didn't learn your lesson the first time.

the fact no one plays it defeats the fundamental reason you made it. you cant test performance limits on an empty server no one plays!!!!!

I have no idea what server you are on (or the regular day-to-day PvP routines of said server), but any objective person who is on PC/NA who isn;t a dyed in the wool Vengeance hater would be able to asnwer all of your questions.

How did you not learn your lesson the first time the server was up?

The first time Vengeance was up PC/NA had ques of consistently over 200 people during primetime through the entire test (with a much higher pop cap). I know this because ESO constantly crashes on my machine, boots my out of Cyrodill, and forces me to log back in. It was faction dependent, with DC having a smaller que of around 40-50ish. Anyone with any business acumen would have concluded that further development was worth trying.

(I will say the second test after the first few days did not have these high ques, with DC often at 3 bars. But you asked about the first campaign and I would attribute the drop to Vengeance II not being as enjoyable because of the questionable mechanics that were introduced: ZoS so does love prioritizes healing/defense over damage))

How is this a good business decision?

Because the current Live PvP is the definition of a sunken cost. Given the results from Vengeance I and that established Vengeance would not require constant balance (which would get in the way of PvE) and would potentially attract a larger audience, it was an obvious direction to go in with the few resources that ZOS allots to combat/PvP development.

To further compound the annoyance, you disable all other cyrodiil instances!!!

I would agree that is a legit complaint. Though, ZOS's reasoning isn't far fetched. The whole point is to test how many calculations Vengeance could handle. I don't agree with the decision, but it is something I can understand. I also think it was dumb to schedule the test that required a high population with an event. So with this question, I do agree with you.

Who is making decisions down there?!

Well, you have a company that had basically given up on PvP in around 2015 or so when it concluded its original vision for PvP was unobtainable because of performance and it wasn't worth investing in solutions to make a high population Cyrodiil functionable. This was a decision made by the first leadership team under Sage and continued by the second leadership team under Lambert and given what I read on the Reddit AuA will be the same for the next leadership team. You have one person incharge of teams for both combat (currently in a poor state) and PvP (ditto), which proves just how low of a priority PvP (and combat balance in general) is for ESO, and has been going almost on a decade now.

who is empowering the person who makes decisions down there?! (who hired the decision maker)

The same for every AAA coperate gaming studio. Suits who have business degrees from a university whose only credentials are taking classes rather than actually building a successful business.

greyhost, you have a server that consistently nears the population limit during regular service hours. then, you implement the vengeance campaign and the servers go empty. the population went from NEAR FULL TO NEAR EMPTY. WHY DID YOU BRING THAT DEAD THING BACK TO LIFE?

GH has a tiny population cap, so saying it (only) nears it during a few hours a day is an indictment of Live PvP and why Vengeance was thought of and developed in the first place. You are also making a false comparison with the tiny caps of GH with the much larger caps of Vengeance. My machine kicked me out of ESO last night again, but for the short time I was on PC/NA, there were absolutely more people on Vengeance than any given night on Live. And this was with an event and with much of the regular PvP players not participating. To insinuate that GH is somehow alive and not a "dead thing" is to ignore the mass exodus of players who have long since quit ESO. If GH was as vibrant and popular as you are insinuating, then Vengeance wouldn't exist.

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It's really not hard to understand why ZOS has went through with Vengeance.

Now, what I will say is that I do not think they have gone in the right direction with Vengeance. For me, the first Vengeance campaign was by far the best. ZOSs problem has always been its balance and combat philosophy: they do not understand high level gameplay and for over a decade they have pandered to defense/healing over offense. So when they introduced more skills (i.e., more defense and healing) for Vengeance II, doing so actually made the gameplay worse. Compounding this was the critique from Vengeance I that everyone agreed with (even supporters), wins and losses came down to a numbers game. That wasn't addressed in Vengeance II, still isn't addressed in Vengeance III, and nothing is being done in Vengeance IV. By ignoring the crucial defect, ZOS has basically lost whatever chance veteran PvPers would ever have in even giving Vengeance a try. It also has tested the patience of potential supporters such as myself who are interested in PvP with big battles, no broken builds, and sans OP ball groups, but have no patience with returning to the same tank/defense/healing oriented gameplay that was responsible for the mass exodus of PvPers from ESO in the first place. I also highly dislike the whole numbers game aspect, and ZOS's failure to even address that concern in these tests is off-putting to say the least.